According to RFA (9 August 17), in March 2017, security personnel in Urumqi municipality, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), detained well-known Uyghur religious scholar Hebibulla Tohti. In May 2017, a XUAR court sentenced Tohti to 10 years' imprisonment on unspecified charges related to "illegal religious activity." Tohti's whereabouts remained unknown. Authorities first detained Tohti in Urumqi in July 2016, after he returned from Egypt, releasing him in January 2017. The Islamic Association of China, the official association of Muslims in China, had sent Tohti to study at Al-Azhar Islamic University in Cairo, where he obtained a doctorate in theology. Tohti's 2016 detention was linked to his allegedly teaching religion to Uyghur students in Egypt and attending a 2015 religious conference in Saudi Arabia, and to highlighting Uyghur culture in his dissertation. Tohti also reportedly "failed to write or speak out positively about Chinese policies" in the XUAR. After his January release and prior to his March detention, the Xinjiang Islamic Institute in Urumqi offered him a teaching position. Scholars at Risk was concerned that Tohti's imprisonment was "in apparent retaliation for the nonviolent exercise of academic freedom..." (SAR, 1 May 17).